Abstract
Development of the motor system lags behind that of the visual system and might delay some visual properties more closely linked to action. We measured the developmental trajectory of the discrimination of object size from observation of the biological motion of a grasping action in egocentric and allocentric viewpoints (observing action of others or self), in children and adolescents from 5 to 18 years of age. Children of 5–7 years of age performed the task at chance, indicating a delayed ability to understand the goal of the action. We found a progressive improvement in the ability of discrimination from 9 to 18 years, which parallels the development of fine motor control. Only after 9 years of age did we observe an advantage for the egocentric view, as previously reported for adults. Given that visual and haptic sensitivity of size discrimination, as well as biological motion, are mature in early adolescence, we interpret our results as reflecting immaturity of the influence of the motor system on visual perception.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Antonino Santagati for his supporting in collecting data in children and adolescents and Francesco Campanella for providing the visual stimuli and Prof David Burr for proof reading of the manuscript and helpful discussion. This research was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FPT/2007–2013), Grant agreement #338866 ECSPLAIN.
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Tinelli, F., Cioni, G., Sandini, G. et al. Visual information from observing grasping movement in allocentric and egocentric perspectives: development in typical children. Exp Brain Res 235, 2039–2047 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4944-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4944-1